Fritz Kortner - Actors and Actresses

Born:
Fritz Nathan Kohn in Vienna, Austria, 12 May 1892.
Education:
Studied at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Vienna.
Family:
Married the actress Johanna Hofer, son: Peter Kortner.
Career:
Actor in Mannheim and Hamburg; 1911—joined Max Reinhardt's
theater, Berlin; achieved star status with his performance in
Die Wandlund
, 1919, and became a leading actor-director in German-language theater;
1915—film debut in
Manya
,
Die Türkin
; 1918—film directing debut with
Gregor Marold
; 1933—left Germany with rise of Nazis and found refuge in New York
after stays in Vienna, Prague, and London; wrote two Broadway plays and
worked as actor and screenwriter in Hollywood; returned to Germany after
the war and regained his stage reputation.
Awards:
Deutscher Filmpreis for career, 1966.
Died:
Of leukemia in Munich, 25 July 1970.

On KORTNER: articles—

Fritz Kortner, like his contemporary Conrad Veidt and the slightly older
Emil Jannings, was associated with Max Reinhardt's Berlin theater
in the years before and after World War I, and like them he became an
important stage actor, combining a stage and a film career. His long life
allowed him to continue after World War II as a leading, if often
controversial, figure on the German-language stage.

His acting had a wider range than that of Werner Krauss, though like
Krauss he was often cast in important parts in the expressionist films of
the 1920s. He could be flamboyant (as in
Warning Shadows
), or more contained, as Lotte Eisner's description of him in
Backstairs
indicates: "Everything is motivated: the slow reactions of a poor
indecisive man scared of love, the hesitations of an outcast of fortune
who, having won his happiness by dint of guile, stops wanting to believe
in it. . . . This instinctively Expressionistic actor blends into the
setting." But he was also able to play such characters as Dr.
Schön in
Pandora's Box
, Beethoven, Dmitri Karamazov, Bothwell, and Dreyfus.

England failed to recognize his ability when he went into exile after
Hitler's taking power in Germany, and he acted in such minor films
as
Chu Chin Chow
and
Abdul the Damned
; he had slightly better luck in the United States. After World War II he
made a few films in Germany, but concentrated on stage work.

—George Walsh

User Contributions:

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: